Leonard A. Lauder is Chairman Emeritus and the senior member of the Board of Directors of The Estée Lauder Companies Inc., one of the world’s leading manufacturers and marketers of prestige skin care, makeup, fragrance and hair care products. He is also an active philanthropist and is deeply involved in the worlds of art, education and politics.

Mr. Lauder currently serves as the Chairman Emeritus of the Whitney Museum of American Art, where he was a trustee from 1977 to 2011. He has been one of the museum’s most significant benefactors, giving a milestone gift of $131 million in 2008 to the museum’s endowment, and helping the museum acquire 948 works of art, 760 of which he gifted personally.

Mr. Lauder is also a long-time supporter of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2013, Mr. Lauder pledged his 78-piece collection of Cubist art to the museum and has since added five major works to that promised gift. In concert with his Cubist collection donation, he helped establish the Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, which supports a robust program of fellowships, focused exhibitions and public lectures, and is the first such center dedicated exclusively to modern art within an encyclopedic museum.

Mr. Lauder is the Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation and the Honorary Chairman of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. He is also a major supporter of the University of Pennsylvania, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Aspen Institute and Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

Among Mr. Lauder’s honors are the Légion d’Honneur, the “Lone Sailor” Award given by the United States Navy Supply Corps Foundation, and the Palazzo Strozzi Renaissance Man of the Year Award. He was also named a 2014 Living Landmark by the New York Landmarks Conservancy and received the esteemed 2011 Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy as a member of the Lauder family in recognition of the family’s long-standing commitment to philanthropy and public service.

Mr. Lauder was married to Evelyn H. Lauder, Founder of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation from 1959 until she passed away in 2011. They had two sons together and five grandchildren. In 2015, Mr. Lauder married Judy Glickman Lauder, a philanthropist and internationally recognized photographer whose work is represented in more than 300 public and private collections. Mr. Lauder and Ms. Glickman Lauder received Gordon Parks Foundation Patron of the Arts Award in 2016.

The Studio Museum in Harlem is honored to announce the fourteenth presentation of The Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize at Gala 2019. The Prize recognizes the achievements of an artist who demonstrates great innovation, promise, and creativity, and includes a monetary award of $50,000. Established by jazz impresario, musician and philanthropist George Wein in memory of his wife, Joyce Alexander Wein, an esteemed trustee of the Studio Museum for many years, the Prize honors the legacy of a woman whose life embodied a commitment to the power and possibilities of art, artists, and culture.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Torkwase Dyson received a BA from Tougaloo College in 1996, a BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 1999, and MFA from Yale School of Art in painting/printmaking in 2003.

Though she works in multiple forms, Dyson describes herself as a painter whose compositions address the continuity of movement, climate change, infrastructure, and architecture. For Dyson these subjects in relationship to each other inform abstractions that explore the history and future of Black spatial liberation and environmental racism.

Dyson's solo exhibitions and installations include Arthur Ross Architecture Gallery, New York; Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Chicago; Bennington College VAPA Usdan Gallery, Vermont; Cooper Union, New York; Colby College Museum of Art, Franconia Sculpture Park, Maine; Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education, Philadelphia; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, and Davidson Contemporary, New York. Group exhibitions include Between the Waters, Whitney Museum of American Art; Plumb Line: Charles White and the Contemporary, California African American Museum; Look for Me All Around You, 2019 Sharjah Biennial; PopRally: Practice and Ritual, Museum of Modern Art.

Torkwase Dyson has been awarded the The Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant, Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists, The Lunder Institute of American Art Fellowship, Spelman College Art Fellowship, Brooklyn Arts Council grant, Yale University Barry Cohen Scholarship, the Yale University Paul Harper Residency at the Vermont Studio Center, Culture Push Fellowship for Utopian Practices, FSP/Jerome Fellowship and Yaddo.

Dyson’s work has also been supported by the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, The Laundromat Project, the Green Festival of New York, Obsidian Arts and Public funds of the City of Minneapolis, Mural Arts Program of Philadelphia, The Kitchen, and Dorchester Projects in Chicago.

Torkwase Dyson lives and works in New York and is a critic at the Yale School of Art.